what's happening to me goes i'm sorry martin this is breaking news that though yesterday obama gave a really impressive and wide ranging speech on an issue that if we have access to ninety nine percent of income inequality he said that the gap between the hoover rich and the rest of the country is the defining challenge of our time and that it drives everything he does and i hope this yes obama even went as far as deconstruct the very system he's a part of. ordinary folks can't write massive campaign checks or hire i priced lobbyists and lawyers to secure policies that tilt the playing field in their favor

at everyone else's expense so people get the bad taste that the systems ranked. that increases cynicism and polarization and it decreases the political participation that is a requisite part of our system of self-government. wow i couldn't agree with him more but if there's one thing we know about this president that he talks a big talk back and all that lofty rhetoric is a different story this is a wall street man who was put in office by goldman sachs obama has appointed big bank lawyers eric holder and lonnie brewer to top positions of the dozens apartment and wall street favorite son timmy geithner to the treasury under obama wealthy americans have only grown stronger and richer and more in bold and so you can't blame me for being just a little bit skeptical of a one percenters script but it's time to end the charade guys let's break the set.

of the. it was a very very hard to take a. long. line that had sex with that hurt right there those. are the. guys there's a grave threat facing our nation and it can hit you anywhere at any time.

could you imagine just walking down the street minding your own business when someone punches you in the face for no reason at all it's called the knockout game with me here rabbi gary busey. which he is a former cop lives in brooklyn he is teaching fellow jews to defend themselves against the so-called knockout attacks has a black belt also in karate and is known to fellow cops is rambo it's also there's a racial component we well let me say this there may be let me say this the victims appear to have been all white and the assailants appear to have been all black so yes it seems the corporate media can't seem to shake its fixation on the latest fake phenomenon because you see this is not new and there is no real data supporting this growing trend in fact over the last two years there's only been get this a point seven percent increase in unarmed random assaults but i do fox news that

a lot of pesky thing called facts stop them from a perfectly good opportunity to fearmonger us about brown people the point is that all of this is being blown out of proportion and it's turned into one giant race baiting distraction so let's look at a couple of stories being knocked out by the knockout game for example have you ever heard of alec or the american legislative exchange council well if you've been watching breaking the set and probably the answer is yes but the corporate media barely makes a mention of this highly influential lobbying group which is holding a giant summit to day and washington d.c. encountered with massive protests see this forty year old organization is comprised of conservative pro-business individuals with team up with corporate heavyweights from telecom to big oil and what do you know alec is responsible for some of the worst legislation on the books including the infamous stand your ground laws voter id requirements and the right to work an initiative which is really one massive attack on unions today back door meetings are happening with lawmakers from all

across the country so they can go back to their respective districts and lay out alex corporate agenda the model bill is being attacked this week are the e.p.a. is regulation of green. house gases and the opposition to food labeling among many others and yet another story overshadowed by the cayo nonsense is n.s.a. spying which by the way is getting worse by the day as the leaks continue to confirm the newest revelation is that the n.s.a. collects a staggering five billion international cell phone g.p.s. locations daily expanding its open air spying prison globally and also the editor of the guardian was recently called to testify before the british parliament why well after publishing n.s.a. leaks related to britain the u.k. government is trying to charge the publication under the terrorism act it's an unprecedented move which many see as the criminalization of journalism and as journalist glenn greenwald brilliantly tweeted if you want to make a list of the world's worst governments you can be again with the ones equating

journalism with terrorism so while the real news is going on the focus is instead on mobs of black people randomly attacking white people maybe it's time to knock out the corporate media instead. do you ever get the feeling the global economic models run entirely on greed but today's society functions soley on the principle of nonstop consumption and while it's clear that humanity is capable of much more the system we live in is simply not sustainable what's the alternative to explore this question and more i spoke with an activist of the d. growth movement but for most an anti consumer's model to society his name is charles eisenstein and he's the author of a new book called the more beautiful world our hearts know what is possible i spoke to him earlier and i first asked him just how the ideals of the growth movement

could be applied to our current political economy. i just don't understand d. growth you have to understand what growth is. growth is in economic terms it's the growth in the amount of goods and services that are exchanged for money so on a systems level that would mean d. growth would mean less and less of nature being converted into products and less of human relationships being converted into services on the personal level it means. reclaiming some parts of life from money let's take a look at u.s. consumption habits in particular because it's pretty shocking when you look at the stats for number one or two in the world and meat consumption depending on what source you're looking at number one in energy waste and number one in food waste charles how do we even begin to tackle mass consumption facing this kind of statistics. well i mean most environmentalist's will tell you that that continued

growth is impossible that that on a finite planet we can't continue to have infinite economic growth and something's got to break you could argue that the economic crisis of two thousand and eight thousand and nine was at bottom a crisis in in growth. because our money system doesn't really work unless there is continually expanding demand which means expanding consumption expanding production expanding employment. more and more being consumed but you look around society and nobody really thinks that you know look at all of the depression all of the waste all of the alienation you know the ecological destruction what this world really needs it's more stuff right i mean nobody's actually thinking that but we're stuck in an economic system that demands that and to solve it would and will require.

a transformation that goes much much deeper than anybody's really. talking about these days right i mean besides the environmental impact of mass consumption how do you think the idea of nonstop consumerism has affected global social habits. yeah i mean any any time that. we encounter what's called an undeveloped market basically what that means is so here's some people who could be consuming more. who don't have a fully monetized life who maybe still haven't lost the skills of mutual care of of i don't know healing with herbs of cooking traditional food ways to to share labor they take care of each other's children kind of like i was here a few generations ago. and then these societies get converted into consumer

societies let's talk about economics because you're just talking about vulture capitalism that's creeping into every nook and corner of the entire world turning people into consumers your book sacred economics you've said that scarcity is built into the monetary system what do you mean by that and how does it apply to today's economy. yeah. so we kind of take scarcity for granted as a fact of life and we look around the world and it's hard to say that there is abundance when one in five children is going hungry every night but you little bit more closely and you see that the reason that they're going hungry isn't because of a lack of food it's because fifty percent of all food in the west is worth close to fifty percent is wasted huge tracts of land are planted for biofuels feedlot meat production. on the largest irrigated irrigated crop in america as long as you know so we don't have

a fundamental scarcity of food what makes it scarce is the way that it's distributed which is largely because of of the way money works so we have a scarcity of money. the same thing with with the recent trend toward shrinking of public services the shrinking of funding for the arts for for education all these things like where is all the money going is that there's a built in physical lack of this substance called money no i mean money is a social agreement we could create as much of it as we wanted. but we're locked into a system and that system itself is locked into deeper more invisible narratives and ideologies and i would even say mythologies that that. perpetuate artificial scarcity so the scarcity is artificial and just to say at bottom where it comes from as far as money goes it comes from the fact that money is created as

interest bearing debt i want to play you a sound bite from milton friedman who famously said this in one thousand nine hundred seventy nine the phil donahue show. of course none of us are greedy it's only the other for the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by free enterprise should it seems so there is friedman saying greed is good there is no turn it have to free market enterprise charles what's your response. well so economic logic says that the more goods and services are produced the happier we are the better off we are like after all if you didn't want something it wasn't good in your life you wouldn't pay for right you would work less and make less money instead of making the money and sacrificing the time to buy this good therefore the more things that

are being bought according to economists the more good it is being at but really you know you look around at you. you examine your life examine the lives of people in affluent countries it's just not true that the more stuff we have the happier we are in fact for a lot of people discover that it's really the opposite that yeah we have more and more of the things that can be quantified but less and less of the things that actually make life rich i think a lot of greed greed is actually a symptom it's a symptom of the scarcity of the things that money can't buy so if you're. an alienated isolated separate self without community without intimate relationships with nature without being. embedded in this web of stories and and intimate relationships that once characterized

society you know there you are in your suburban box disconnected from nature and community then you're going to feel hungry for something you're going to want to reestablish your last being this and so you'll have. an unstoppable desire to consume to expand the separate self to compensate for the last being and i think when we're talking about growth as on the personal level a lot of people they want to recover these personal connections that can't be measured and that therefore economic growth and that whole ideology of greed will never satisfied. that was author and activist charles eisenstein for us in new york . coming up i'll speak with one activist who wants to democratize our local economies and most show you how. to get a quote for you. today where it's a story. because this guy like you would save your stead of working for the people

most issues the biggest reason we're right on stage. is. we're in the bedroom. i think. everybody. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention of the constitution in chicago that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy trade albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and oppressive like oh we've been a hydrogen why a handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers but once told us my job market and on this show we reveal the big

picture of what's actually going on in the world if we go beyond identifying the problem to try to fix rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing america if i ever feel ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. with wealth inequality in america an all time high and congressional approval ratings are an all time low it's no wonder why people are worried about the future of this country today money not only means means political speech and the more wealth and the consolidated at the top the less people feel they have the power to change the system by the wealthy and powerful interests working to get the people all the time there are still plenty of steps we can take right now right here to

democratize our local economies here to break down what exactly those steps are md i'm a professor of political economy the university of maryland gar pair of it thank you so much for coming on alex are already are sorry you used to research foreign policy starting with world war two all the way to vietnam kind of analyzing the u.s. empire crimes what inspired your switch to domestic economics well i think unless we change the system totally from the bottom up we're going to have international expansionism period has been. over time proceeding move back to the heart of the question that is the nature of the political economy and i think the last discussion of how we actually in the changing the system is the only answer to the ultimate intra foreign policy questions too. and you coauthored an article with. ten ways to democratize your local economy it goes with your book what then must we do pretty much a playbook on how to do this. number one in the article is putting your money in local credit unions talk about this concept of what is a credit union and what it would do to democratize the community credit union and

we have many people one hundred thirty million americans who have democratized wealth that's a co-op one person one vote bank is a credit union they've got if you take them all together they have more money than the big new york banks any one of them wow and there they are you can move your money out of the bank and put it into a credit union which is a democratic bang. and you can go a little further what some people in some parts of the country are doing too they are one person one vote you can get your friends together go to the board meeting and you can become the board of a one person one vote bank and begin investing in co-ops and other things that begin to show people a different direction towards the overall system stepping that starting at the bottom and why is the call to fix these too big to fail too big to regulate banks not enough i think it what's going to happen with the banks if even if they break them up they will reconsolidate that's what happened standard or a t.n.t. so it was some level they're going to have to be turned into either public co-ops and i think people are going to get angry enough to do that or nationalized but

that's the ultimate solution but building from the bottom up giving people an idea of what it means that's the way you begin to build education by doing and then pointing towards larger and larger issues the book is not in the strategies not just at the bottom it's how do we build over time to move to the big ones as well absolutely part of another initiative in the article which is taking back your local government through participatory budgeting to talk about this concept how does this work this is very interesting it started out in brazil in porto alegre that is to say why does it my can't the ordinary citizen be involved in the allocation of government money why not and so you can set that up in fact three cities new york does about ten million dollars that way in chicago one of the aldermen to set up his district to do it that way vallejo california there they do very large scale citywide budgeting is beginning to be done that way changing the nature of the lobbyist to come in to the city council having ordinary people make those decisions as possible and again we're pointing from the bottom up and moving up nationally those are the kind of things we could build up to if we learn from

the bottom up over time you know does case studies are really fascinating and one that you cited in the article how would we even began to do something like that in washington d.c. i mean what's the first step but the principle well washington first step would be to go to go through the council and begin petition get a referendum saying we want to do this with x. number of dollars or in some neighborhoods or part. if it just beginning making the demand it's being done other cities all over the world it's being done why can't we do it here good question gar and really how amazing would it be to control our taxes taxes were there ever been a decision we could do something about that at least a locally recently boulder colorado just voted to. put there are like tricity under public control this is an incredible feat to produce more renewables could this be replicated around the country as well i think that is what's interesting about boulder boulder had two big fights they won one by just a fraction of the vote and then of course the corporations came in and this is all done mainly by young people a lot of students involved in the next time around two to one vote and they want it

and they're turning it from you know coal fire and oil fire over to renewables and it's a very serious operation there's discussion in pittsburgh and minneapolis many cities could do this and picking up on the boulder how did they exactly do it was a referendum was the first step in getting yet another referendum was forced and then they organized as they really did organize brilliantly so what you're saying is we have to get out and do something about this is a big i mean it really is through these referendums and local actions that you can take i don't think people realize how much power they have what they don't the press doesn't cover this but this is going on all over the country and that's what the book what then must we do is about that's what the paper did with gene is about there's a lot going on with co-ops worker owned companies public banks that the press doesn't cover but can be done right and you could if they can do it in boulder if you can do it in chicago you could do it where you are there's fights being won all across the nation all across the world against the corporatocracy ghar let's talk about another prescription in the article in the book about nonprofit institutions like universities and hospitals you're talking about how they can use their

resources to fight things like unemployment poverty and global warming how how would that work what would be incentivization. yeah how would they be incentivized part of their being pushed this is a good one for students because that on one hand challenging them to stop investing in energy companies which are polluting and creating the climate change. but the other part of it is hospitals and universities particularly buy a lot of things in cleveland for instance there's a hospital university the hospital cleveland clinic and then it's case western reserve university right in the middle of a very poor neighborhood they buy three billion dollars in goods and services plus their investment plus their salary just what they buy so they are in that city there there's been an initiative to buy from work or own companies in a very poor part of the city to create worker ownership using procurement students can make that happen in many universities they can say stop investing in the big guys start buying from worker co-op start building upward neighborhoods that also

is happening in the press covers very little of it but it is do it's doable it's being done and it's another precedent for democratizing ownership and building a different vision of where we're going to fall i think decades ago someone saw the corporatization of private takeover of hospitals and universities. and here we are with actual corporate name is taking over hospitals and would that be done through referendums as well through the school through any any any track that gets you there referendum is one but it's pressure right and in some cases you find universities and hospital administrator is welcome the idea that they've just been locked into an old pattern say well why not we can do that here and that's what i think happened in some parts of cleveland beautiful what other communities are practicing efforts like these that could serve as a blueprint for the rest of country again as i said to the press just doesn't cover it pittsburgh has been developing this cincinnati is developing there are three in the washington area washington d.c. area is developing in amarillo texas number of cities one hundred cities have already made inquiries to do the cleveland with so called the cleveland model of

worker co-ops supported by the purchasing of hospitals and universities so it's beginning to spread all over the country now and i think you're going to see more of it again young people could really make it happen at universities if they begin putting the pressure on and telling them you know this is being done lots of places why don't we get on the bandwagon start doing it or i think i think the first step is that you know people are just so overwhelmed. where do they even go how do they meet up with people to start these referendum to start these movements of pressure what's your recommendation first thing resources tools we have about a minute left ok well the book what the must we do just filled with these kinds of examples that's why we wrote website what then can i do that's the list of things that jean and i put together another website it's called double it is about the community dash of wealth but the dash dot org and you'll find thousands of examples of this kind of thing that you can do and build up and again the notion is not just local but how do we begin getting ideas that can be applied you know before the new

deal the national things were done in the state and local laboratories and then they became national ideas that's the concept you're not just look at we're going national with a long build up over time beautiful this is exactly what we need we need to start local grassroots bottom up to take this country back one community at a time carl purvis thank you so much everyone check out what that must we do and what i do thank you so much for coming out for having me. today workers across the country took to the streets in an unprecedented sign of solidarity against the fast food industries pathetically low wages thousands of fast food employees walked off the job to demand a fifteen dollars an hour wage and the right to unionize about punishment what started as a small we're going to move in in just a few select cities has caught on like wildfire now spread over one hundred cities

across the nation considering the massive profits profits rather these corporate giants are raking in it's no wonder why workers are fed up with trying to get by on an livable wage the two biggest craptacular restaurants mcdonald's and young brands collectively bring in a seven billion dollar your income despite a growing profit margin and employees just aren't feeling. trickle down and it's not just fast food workers themselves that are suffering it's every american and let me tell you why because no one can realistically survive on seven twenty five an hour u.s. taxpayers have been forced to make up the difference in public assistance programs such as food stamps and medicaid in fact according the national employment law project mcdonald's alone cost taxpayers one point two billion dollars just last year which is quite ironic considering how these are the same corporations fighting against the nanny state yet they're the biggest welfare queens of all so big props

for these workers who refuse to maintain the status quo and are putting their jobs on the line to challenge these crony institutions. in closing tonight i want to pay my respects to former south african president nelson mandela who died just a few hours ago at the age of ninety five this inspiring leader an anti-apartheid revolutionary not only changed his country but the entire world with his message of peace and racial unification i'll bring you more mandela's life and legacy tomorrow but for now i'll leave you with his words no one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion people must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate they can be taught to love for love comes more naturally to the human heart and its opposite.

countries. are the poorest. of the big corporations it's a colony of someone's home leaders who are under the big corporations so they have to. develop social programs goes to pay back debts country. that they had and so every year they would borrow money. same amount of money to pay back. money.

one of. these. people. pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm.

dependent on the world bank and the international monetary fund africa finds itself crippled by foreign debt and remains a continent of great poverty and inequality is. as long as we are in thrall to and dominated by debt i've even go so far as to say enslaved. there is no attention paid to social affairs like health and education can you imagine we have to sacrifice congolese children who have to die who cannot study because they have to pay for the debt. and the international community talks about generosity now they are talking about cancelling the debt as an act of generosity by controlling the country's resources. that date debt is used to keep countries with natural resources under control. it is used to control

countries in the southern hemisphere both politically and economically. today we've got less than five percent of the world's population living in the united states consuming almost thirty percent of the resources and roughly half the world is living in poverty close to starvation are actually starving that's a failure it's not a model it's not something that can be replicated in africa or india or latin america so it's a failed system we know that it's a failed system. like the world bank and the international monetary fund play

a crucial role in the entire history of the debt crisis he's a fact. created in nineteen forty four began to lend on the large scale developing countries in the sixty's. they had actually started in the fifty's. the real surge in loans explores in the sixty's. the roles of the i.m.f. and the world bank have changed radically since then. both institutions have become instruments of oppression. and control over new sovereign countries in the immense and via. the most typical way that economic hit men work is that we'll identify a country that has resources our corporations covet like oil for example and then arrange a huge loan to that country. for the world bank or one of its sisters. doesn't actually go to the country and goes to our own. in the democratic republic of

congo is the most powerful. one of the best examples the workings of the system since it was built one problem after another. represents the most emblematic of what we call the. realisations that have increased the country's foreign debt with objectives that have nothing to do with human or economic development but. today the congolese people have to pay for which was not built for them but to supply energy to the. two kilometers away. what i find appalling is the complicity of the multinationals of certain countries of businessmen and even of scientists who proposed this giant machine. but today we have reached a situation where we have to pay back the debt without necessarily having access to

electricity. but the main problem that we face when we have financial institutions like the world bank or the international monetary fund when we debated the construction of the dam these institutions knew that we were going to use all the electricity nevertheless we were made to build this dam because it suited the big multinationals today it is the congolese people the little people who pay. for me this status odious we should repudiate it and we should even ask for a compensation from all of these companies who brought us equipment that didn't work. ingo is an example of something that has not worked but it's also an example of an investment that hand were you've mentioned in those three and for our interest in seeing that the existing investments in are actually used to generate electricity for the people. ultimately over time maybe this in future ngo can

provide electricity elsewhere but we're not there yet right now the priority is getting to work. he did today was to link to the katanga mines there by passing electricity through a high tension line which flies over in most of the country have to. be so katanga could be punished at any time by cutting the interrupt in the lower congo. we want an interest of the you know village after all it is our as. instead other foreign countries are using it. and we who own the power find ourselves in darkness . what is happening is that angola south africa and butts wanna be the authorities with currencies well the people of the lower congas feel less interest . in this village like in all other villages the main difficulty is the electricity

supply. and as the dam also has its own problems it cannot supply electricity in the entire public republic and more particularly in the capital kinshasa which experiences major problems with regard to energy supply. and as you can see we find wooden post says they are their defeat and lines which literally cross the rooftops of houses. with this situation we risk having problems with electrocution even house fires. in a village near. witnessed an incident which could have had dramatic consequences.

everyone knows that electricity contributes to development in the well but when there are no roads we need them so you can transform farming produce electricity would allow us to conserve and packaged goods but what is happening today i think. is it if we had electricity we could save our forests today we destroy them for firewood so we lose out twice a day dead has its consequences now the forest is being destroyed instead of being able to use electricity we are destroying our forests. the forests of the congo basin cover an area of over one hundred seventy two million excess. in a widespread context of corruption and poor governance despite the moratorium and the forest code imposed by the world bank in two thousand and two attempts to reform that would industry have not yet met with any success in the democratic republic of congo and are endangering the planet second.

some seventy percent of the world's poor people live in the countryside and depend completely on the eco system. houses them and takes care of them and. when the world bank finances projects that destroy the. quality of life and even the livelihood and survival of local populations. without permission we decided to try our luck at the steelworks. threatening to

call for the intervention of a minister we were allowed to visit this immense empty factory. it is in this factory was built to use and consume electricity from the nga. yet we knew very well that when they were building this factory the raw material they were going to use was scrap iron and rusty iron gathered in europe which is unacceptable given what we know the country's potential in terms of minerals is. in effect the situation is ridiculous underground particularly. the minerals are dug up to be exported eight thousand kilometers away and smelted. then used to make steel in the northern countries to make vehicles machines and when these vehicles are machines end up on the scrap heap they are compacted and shipped in a boat in the congo. which causes the river to rise. on

the food this scrap metal is then melted in to create refined steel. it's completely ridiculous. the. never worked it was money down the drain just a waste but not for the multinationals which one yet multinational sold their technology it is the congolese people who are losing out today. and all the wealth is being controlled because of this debt. i don't think so because what is the reasoning of the heads of the world bank and the i.m.f. . this is what they say we will make these developing countries used to the funding we provide them for the development and for the daily management of their business . if we make them reliance on this funding

if you know we vary by obtain a means of influencing them and it is a six hating eight certain type of policy the pretty take. over when robert mcnamara to covert at the world bank he wanted to do something grandiose. he began by boring on the markets in order to be able to lend more he flew home and sell loans in the south where some countries and me to they were completely incapable of keeping them back. save so it's some point we can all make it mean go back and we say listen you know since you can't pay your debts give us a pound of flesh sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies or vote with us on the next united nations boat that's critical to our to our policies or allow us to build a military base on your soil things like that and in the few times when we fail

when we're unable to corrupt presidents to get them to accept these loans when we fail then the jackal's going on and they either overthrow governments or assassinate their leaders both rolled oats of ecuador and to rehearse of panama were assassinated because i was unable to corrupt them i couldn't get them to accept these conditions. he didn't. condemn the world bank the i.m.f. the exam lenders in general is a clear example. there was a coalition of interests against him by the great powers governments pre-sold. companies and international institutions. and the key who gave the order to assassinate day to design the assassination plot that i don't know but what is clear is that those who assassinated him since he knew that they did it

to defend certain interests and in these interests there were the interests of lenders that's for sure. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough to. say wait substory. get this guy like you but sheer about guys that are working for the people both issues the mainstream media are working for each other right right was a vision. of

a good writer. crosstalk rules in effect got into can jump in anytime you want.

that's on top of all this is the context of the cold war when western countries strongly prodded these countries to become indebted to keep them in their place on it it would if it was very difficult for instance to stop backing and mobutu. even if we try to me but given the geo political balance of the time it was you but we couldn't take the risk that a country so rich in mineral resources as year could move to the wrong side could tune a program of the. problem with that is not its absolute level as he did me a home will say it's their ability of country to pay it back and with what means

this. file structural adjustment programs are aimed at supplying capital to pay this debt. on reality we are reducing their ability of these countries to achieve any economic success economy can kong. leasure the most what is structural adjustment of. the it is really the awareness of the fact that these countries were put in a complete deadlock. it is to say that these countries were in bed and had an incapacity to continue to function which led to them taking quite drastic and radical measures. with the structural adjustments the following diagnosis was made with the economies acknowledge the deficits and these deficits have to be paid to pay these deficits cuts in the public spending when necessary the first expenses

hits were social expenses unfortunately. in doing that we cut spending including social spending and that obviously had a negative effect on health education and social housing report obviously. this took place at a time when that chair was in power in the u.k. and reagan in the us. it was really the law of the markets. and so the economists of the i.m.f. the world bank and in a lot of other countries even bilateral cooperation said allow real prices to rule and all problems will be solved. i think that by doing that we did a lot of harm mainly because we didn't know ways to understand the economic policy of these countries.

once the structural adjustments were imposed by creditors namely the world bank and i.m.f. it was like hell on earth here. at the hospital everything had become. consultations you have to pay to see the doctor to get more syringe is more alcohol. i mean it was hell people often died from curable diseases. and people in poor health who have no access to health care makes development impossible. you know you can't concentrate on development in those conditions at times it makes you sick and revolts you because it is unacceptable and unbearable people that's an injustice in the world but the debt of congo fourteen billion dollars. what does that represent that as of two thousand and ten the total of the developing countries

public debt is in the region of one point three five trillion dollars. and the us foreign and domestic debt is thirteen trillion which is ten times more. should these countries continue to pay millions of dollars the president of the republican the government have said that it takes fifty million dollars every month to service its debt how much gets spent on health and education every month the answer is zilch. teaches in primary schools badly paid and underpaid. the teacher comes to school with little biscuits that she gives out to children who should pay them back . so already from the first year of school children are taught how to get in debt we. give to children and after three days children have

to own. their parents for money it's like an international institution if you missed the deadline the child is forced to pay double the price significant sometimes this makes the child afraid to come to school. today with the system of parent the child who doesn't pay. well before sometimes these economic policies have been conducted for reasons of budgetary adjustment we could no longer finance a certain number of public services and therefore we thought means of financing them through privatization. but the people who control the privatizations were people who came from the outside people well connected in the end and that did not produce very favorable results for people who were low down on the social ladder was. one of the examples of the i.m.f. most brutal policies of privatization bodies in niger. prevent disaster forced

privatization of all the national transport office and private entrepreneurs who took over the national office. work according to the principle of private entrepreneurs which is completely normal. you'll soon see so they never send a lorry on the ground which in periods of famine in niger. leads to death as a dozen the rife because of this privatization but this is. the international monetary fund applied the first program of structural adjustment in congo in one thousand nine hundred eighty six since then the i.m.f. has been there. and no progress is being made in congo i always say that it is like a sick person who goes to the doctor the chemists there are all there the laboratory assistants they do the tests they prescribe medicine and the sick person

stay sick forever what should actually happen is that the doctor should resign and thats it. what is the role of the i.m.f. if it doesn't prevent crises what is the role of the world bank this bank which is supposed a development. if it be the i.m.f. kills the world bank by blindly of course not intentionally but by its dogmatic and here to the washington consensus which is completely brutal. but in poor countries people africa's a colony it's a colony of the big corporations it's a colony of some of its own leaders who are under the thumbs of the big corporations so in a way the european empires marched out and supposedly gave africa its independence but immediately the corporations marched in and a few handpicked leaders handpicked by the european nations and the court and the corporations took over many of the countries especially the countries with good

resources. for thirty years old african and latin american economies have been or unstated towards we don't reimbursing this debt and this is completely shattered their economies in other words the ones that we have specialized in farming which represents eighty percent of the economy in countries like mali products such as cotton cocoa for export to west african countries. behind that is the neglect of food production and the exposure of these countries to famines and malnutrition and it's no coincidence that today if eighty percent of the world's population who are dying of hunger in fact has exactly. agriculture with its current production rates could easily feed twelve billion human beings which is

almost double the world's population in other words. cannibals is that dictatorship of globalized financial capital has imposed on this planet is both murderous but at the same time. the figures speak for themselves i could take. victims of polluted water etc. in the d.r. see they are asking us today to produce more products for export to make more money especially to pay back the debt so they force us to produce palm oil they ask us to produce coffee at the time of structural adjustment it was coffee palm oil cotton people had to. ask the d r c as you have diamonds you have gold gold. would you can sell and buy products which may come from

china or europe the chicken that comes from europe the chicken that comes from france do will key which come from the belgian abba chores or from argentina the new one and we don't need them because we can raise our own i assure you that in this country when you have planted maize for months afterwards you already have the product yeah as for rice there are regions where we produce rice even here here where we are we produce rice but as for meat we have the plateaus and. today places like the plateau of are used for mining exploitation and today we import meat chicken awful we import more than one hundred forty thousand tons of meat an awful and chickens so all that is really a policy of submission a policy of dependence but we can grow everything here everything.

in terms of the market fish frozen chicken. tomatoes even onions everything is imported rice because there is no local production they used to be in these countries we used to have big rice paddy fields we grew it in these countries but everything that we produce here now has to be exported especially wood and petrol for the most part this is why you don't farm land to feed people let's say have imposed a policy of zero cultivation in particular that is to say that here priority is given to increase today where even trying to substitute menu for bread in order to make sure it's more profitable because money is made locally so fortunately people hold onto their money orc their only productions that still exists are small family productions all the farms that were built during the eighty's to produce for the country and to make the country self-sufficient were destroyed. as the world bank has insisted that everyone plant food for expert. that's all right if it is

one two or three countries but when the red dozen or more countries which make the same thing remember and in the same quality of. coffee cotton metals etc that's an acceptable proof if there is too much supply on the market that brings prices down. because this is led to a reduction in the income since the income comes from exports because they're told to do so and agree to do it. it in bill didn't is a perfect example of this for export eighty year where we are held out the prospect of demand that the market exist that it only had to be produced must exist. and what do they find better to tell us today well we're incapable of feeding ourselves the group at google. because it answers to turn towards biofuels well biofuels filo

or stomachs or will we have to feel reserve wise to pollute more i don't know if you mean right now where selling agricultural land. that was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little league there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow

the breaking news please the alexander family cry tears of joy at it great things out there that had been regarded at a court of law found alive there's a story made sort of movies playing out in real life. one of the new alarming a lot of these new knowledge base i think sometimes you know. the lead. a pleasure to have you with us here on our t.v. today i roll researcher.

think. over. that you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy shrek help us. build. them again oh i'm sorry and i'm this show we were the a little picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying the problem to try to fix rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america have a go ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. launch ahmar been in washington d.c. it has.